Mend My Dress Press

All posts tagged Mend My Dress Press

We just said good-bye to our very first intern at Mend My Dress Press and we are so sad to see her go! We had an awesome five months with Helen, who helped us us table to first few stops of our 1-year anniversary tour, helped keep our inventory up to date, edited manuscripts, reviewed zines, kept us laughing, and entertaining us with educating us on sci-fi literature. But now Helen is on her way to explore different things and we are so sad to see her go, but so glad she dedicated her time and efforts to helping us.

Check out what Helen thought about her internship:

I had no idea what I was getting into when I applied for the internship at Mend My Dress Press, but I am so glad and privileged to have had this experience. Being an English Literature major and having a life long interest in books, I have always been intrigued by publishing. Even with my basic knowledge I can see that the publishing industry is changing and small presses like MMDP are becoming much more common. I liked MMDP’s focus on zines and zine culture, social justice issues and personal stories. It was a very different world from my academic one, one that sometimes felt more real than my college experience.

My tasks at MMDP were wide ranging and varied. I helped Neely and Colleen put together inventory for tabling events and run book readings. There were several late nights and long hours and schedule changes to deal with. Even exhausted, I enjoyed these readings and getting to meet both authors and readers. I edited manuscripts and made calls about potential titles. It was amazing and rewarding to be given so much independence and trust in my tasks.

Of course, there were less interesting tasks like counting inventory, pricing, or putting together various mailing lists, but I got to work with Neely at MMDP headquarters which was always fun and usually involved the softest cat in the world sitting on my lap!

Whatever the tasks included, whether it was researching zine libraries or potential tabling events, I was so happy to get to help out the Press. Independent publishing companies like this one are hugely important, but they take a lot of time and effort to run. I feel honored to have met and worked with Colleen and Neely and to have gotten a glimpse into this world of independent publishing.

Wow, it’s been a while since we updated y’all with our recent shenanigans (perhaps, in part, because we’ve been so busy), so it’s high time for a post!

Earlier this month (November 3rd, to be exact), Neely and I trucked a bunch of stuff from my house all the way over to the other side of town to take part in Seattle’s Short Run Small Press Fest. It’s always fun going to events, but I have to admit, it’s really fun going to events in your hometown. While mostly comic artists were present at Short Run, there were also some more text focused zines, and Neely and I had a really awesome time looking through everyone’s items, which ranged from Small Press books, to small handmade books of drawings, to beautifully drawn and printed comics, to old school copy and staple zines.

Neely at our table at Short Run Small Press Fest

It was really great to connect with some new local artists and writers, and to see friends from all around the Pacific Northwest, plus, I scooped up the Invincible Summer 2013 calendar, which is pretty rad, along with some other sweet zines and comics.

And for the past few weeks we’ve mostly been focusing on filling orders, getting stock out to distros and bookstores (Which brings me to a side note: Bluestockings in NYC will have all the Mend My Dress Press zine anthologies in stock soon, so keep an eye out if you’re in the store for our titles), and getting stock ready for our own distro, which is launching in just a few days.

That’s right, ya heard me. We were going to wait to the new years to open up the full distro store, but figured we had a decent amount of stock so we should open up early. So, in the cheery spirit of the winter holidays, we are officially opening up the online shop on Small Business Saturday (aka Nov. 24th) and running a 10% off sale store-wide through Monday, Nov 26th. To stock up now, just use the code SMALLSAT2012 at checkout to get your discount.

oh yeah, you can also access our shop right from our facebook page. nifty, eh?